Homecoming
by inulover28
Summary: Pidge muses on her friends reactions to her coming out as opposed to the reactions she had growing up. A brief look into Katie Holts younger years as Kevin. Trans-Female Pidge.


I've had this running through my mind ever since the trans-male Pidge concepts started being cycled around the fandom. I hope you enjoy my little drabble and take on the trans concept.

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The darkness of her room was overbearing and the silence rang in her ears loudly. Without so much as a window to let in starlight it felt like a blackhole. She couldn't so much as see her hand in front of her face but stared up at what was her ceiling anyway. Her earlier confession ricochetted around her mind as vividly as a movie screen in her head, pushing sleep at bay.

 _Oh, I'd kind of figured it out already._

 _Yeah, I already knew_

 _Wait, we were supposed to think you were a boy?_

No questions. No jokes. Just acceptance. Suspicions, even, that she was a girl. She felt a rush of dizzying excitement at the thought even as she was laying down. Her heart picked up its rhythm again and her chest tightened. She hadn't expected to ever make the confession or for it to go so easily. Not after so many coming out horror stories. Not after the way she'd been treated as a child.

Pidge…Katie, hadn't always been Katie. Up until she was seven she'd been Kevin.

Kevin was a boundless ball of energy from the moment he could crawl. His fascination with technology had started early. Robots and computers were tied as his favorite toys. He'd sit on his dads lap and ogle the lines of code the man would type out at lightening speeds. He'd watch from a safe distance as the sparks flew in the lab while their father showed Matt how to weld. Barely out of diapers and they'd hardly been able to keep Kevin from charging in and weaving around their legs to get a better look.

By 5-years-old, and with just a little help from his dad, he'd made his first remote controlled robot. He'd also discovered his mother's make-up and happily pranced around a whole day with florescent pink cheeks, gobs of bright red lipstick smeared across his lips, and bruises of purple eye shadow around his eyes. His mother had thought it was the cutest thing. There was nearly a whole photo album filled of his fashion show. No one batted an eye at the way Kevin didn't seem to care about gender norms. His parents didn't see any harm it the ways Kevin expressed himself. He liked dolls and princesses as much as he liked action figures and Power Rangers and why shouldn't he? He was five years old and his parents wouldn't inundate him with pointless stereotypes telling him what he could and couldn't like.

Their openness may have been the reason it took so long for them to notice that Kevin's lack of 'conformity' went deeper than just playing with dolls and getting into his mother's make-up.

The more he grew aware of himself and the other kids in his kindergarten the more he realized there was something different between him and the other boys. Kevin wasn't sure what it was exactly. He'd been too young to understand but understood that there was a strange difference between boy and girl things. The boys refused to play with dolls, so he played with the robots instead. He was laughed at when he got excited over Sarah's new dress. Her parents had let her wear it to school and Kevin had been fascinated with the frilly bows and lace. When he'd said he wished he could try it on the laughing only got louder.

"You can't wear dresses!" one of the boys had laughed.

"Yeah. You're a boy!" another girl had giggled and Kevin had stood there confused. What did being a boy have to do with wanting to wear a dress? With a child's attention span the moment passed quickly enough and not ten minutes later they'd run outside to play in the sandbox. Still, that moment never completely left Kevin's mind; what was the difference between boys and girls?

"Mommy? Why am I a boy?" he'd asked one night at dinner while pushing his broccoli around his plate. He'd asked the question so casually that it had taken his parents off guard. They stared blankly at the phrasing as he glared at the broccoli he knew he'd be forced to eat and stuffed one in his mouth obediently. After a moments silence he looked up at his parents with bright eyes and repeated his question."Why am I a boy?"

"Because that's how you were born, sweetie," his mother had replied after a moment to catch her thoughts.

"But _why_ was I born a boy? Why wasn't I born a girl?" he corrected her pointedly. Only 5 years old and he was far more articulate than any of the other kids his age. He understood the nuances of language but not between boys and girls.

"Have the kids been picking on you again for playing with dolls?" Matt frowned. He was always protective of his brother and hated watching him bullied for liking 'girly' things. Kevin shook his head no.

"Why are you asking, Kevin?" his dad asked as the five year old focused back on his dinner, swinging his legs in the chair happily enough as he shrugged.

"Because everyone says there are girl things and boy things and I'm not supposed to like girl things." he said then looked right at his father. "Why was I born a boy? Why wasn't I born a girl?"

"That's just how the genetics worked out, Kev. Biology decided to make you a boy, it's nothing that we can control. Just like you have brown hair, genetics made you a boy."

"I don't like genetics. They're dumb. They make boy and girl things too complicated. There shouldn't be boy and girl things, there should just be things." he pouted and crossed his arms defiantly. He puffed out his cheeks, not liking that it wasn't something he could control. The atmosphere at the dinner table relaxed slightly. His mother pet his hair and kissed his cheek.

"You're right, sweetie. There shouldn't be boy and girl things. People should be able to like whatever they like. Never forget that."

At the time that had been enough for Kevin. He liked boy and girl things and he didn't care who judged him for it. Some kids accepted that and some didn't. The ones that didn't had tried to beat him up once but Kevin wasn't about to let himself be pushed around. He head butted the boy trying to grapple him to the ground and sent him running away sobbing with a bloody lip.

They didn't pick on him anymore after that. That had been when he was six.

He was starting to notice other things by then, like at gym class they made the boys and girls change separately. There were separate bathrooms too. When he'd asked his teacher why he'd said it was because girls and boys had different private parts and that Kevin should ask his parents more. He didn't ask, but Kevin did what he did best. He observed.

The teacher had said the difference was 'private parts' but Kevin couldn't see anything different. All of the kids looked mostly the same, nothing stood out. Most of the girls wore dresses and got to play with dolls but nothing looked different about them. Then he looked at the adults. Adult girls looked completely different than adult boys. They were pretty and soft and curvy. They had shiny hair and pink lips. Adult boys were stiff and board-like. They had broad shoulders and large hands and were overbearing and towering. Kevin didn't want to look like that. What decided what he would look like when he grew up?

"Mom? When I grow up can I look like you?" he'd asked one night while watching his mom put on a shiny pair of earrings. His parents were going out for dinner and leaving Kevin and Matt with their grandmother for the night. She had her face painted up carefully and her dress was clingy and shimmery. She was beautiful and Kevin wanted to look just like her. She giggled and shook her head.

"What are you talking about, Kevin? You already look like me."

"No. I mean will I look like _you_. Like a girl. I wanna be pretty." he'd said and sat up on the bed with a frown. "I wanna wear dresses and look like you. I don't wanna look like dad." His mother's lips pulled into a tight expression as she came to sit beside him and pulled him into her lap. If she hadn't suspected something before then the alarms were going off now.

"Sweetie, where is this coming from? Why do you want to look like me?" her voice had been gentle as she'd stroked his hair. "Because you like dresses and shiny things?" she'd asked and Kevin shook his head.

"No. I like robots too. But… I don't want to look like a boy. Do I have to grow up and be a boy?" he'd asked quietly as he buried his face in his mother's chest. He didn't know why but the thought was scary. That wasn't what he wanted his body to look like. It felt wrong. He sniffled and clung to his mother then. "I don't want to be a boy. Can I not be a boy?"

His mother held him and shushed him the rest of the night. They never went out to dinner.

After that there had been such a flurry of people his parents had taken him to see that Katie still couldn't remember them all. They all asked the same questions about why he didn't want to be a boy. Kevin didn't understand all of the questions or what they wanted him to answer so he just talked. The more he talked the more he wanted to change. The more he wanted to be a girl.

His mom had long hair so he wanted to grow his out too. He asked for the bows he'd admired and his interest in girls clothes had started to turn from curiosity to desire. It wasn't that he just liked the clothes, he felt right in them. His parents never argued or fought him over it and if anything they indulged him. Looking back on it, Katie knew that before they'd had the official verdict from a psychologist that Kevin identified strongly as a transgendered female that his parents were suspecting the truth and already supporting her.

Things only got more confusing from there as Kevin grew more aware and spoke to the therapists regularly. He was dressing as a girl by that point and had asked his parents to call him Katie and stop calling him 'he'.

The kids at school didn't get it at all and she found herself stuck in the boys locker rooms still. The teachers didn't seem to care that she was a girl or what her parents said, just that she had a penis. She would find her skirts missing after gym classes and her bows thrown in the mud. She was teased and picked on to the point where she couldn't keep fighting back every bully anymore and her scrappiness was no longer an asset. Girl or boy she could only take on so many people at once. One of the girls had thrown her off the side of the slide and she'd broken her arm. Katie thought that might have been the last straw for her parents. By the time she was nine and fully identifying as a girl her parents decided to change Katie's school. Finally she was able to start over with no baggage and be accepted for who she was, both at home and at school and her life became infinitely better.

She was old enough to know she couldn't tell anyone what kind of girl she was. She was terrified that anyone would call her a boy again or tease her so she made sure to be as girly as possible. She hid her love of robots and focused on the make-up her friends were getting into. She didn't own more than one pair of pants, finding that the skits and dresses hid her frame better anyway. She could hide behind the billowing folds of a fluffy skirt easier as she watched her friends bodies slowly getting curvier and fuller.

Despite her insecurities she'd been happy. She could be herself. Her parents supported her with every fiber of their being. They never made her feel wrong. Her brother protected her whenever he had to and they still worked in the lab together after school. Instead of his adorable brother he now had an adorable sister that he doted on just as much. Switching schools had been a breath of fresh air deep in her lungs and she could truly be Katie. Kevin fell to the background and never showed his head again.

Life had been amazing, and it hadn't been until she was older and connected with other transgendered kids online that she realized not everyone had such an easy time. Not everyone's parents understood or tried to help. Not everyone had the luxury to transition or change schools or be open about who they were. Katie knew how lucky she was to have such a happy family who supported her in everything she did and everything she was. Even while she was still figuring some of it out herself.

Katie was sure that Kevin was buried for good until her father and brother disappeared. Until Katie was banned from the Garrison facilities.

She knew they were hiding the truth about the accident. There had been signs of communications of alien nature before all lines had been cut and she was furious that it was being swept under the rug.

No matter what she knew she also knew she had gotten too close and now she was barred from the truth. No amount of arguing would get her back into the facilities to keep digging. Her mother accepted that her father and brother were dead and they'd watched a Military funeral procession with two empty coffins. Katie watched the empty coffins be lowered into the ground with tears spilling down her cheeks knowing that it was wrong. She needed to find the truth. She needed to find them.

She needed to be someone else to get into the school, but who? Katie had no chance of getting passed the guards anymore…but no one knew Kevin anymore. Katie had paced her room for days deciding if she could do it. Kevin was long dead in her mind. It was like putting on a shed snakes skin and the thought of having to take on her old identity made her skin crawl.

She looked in the mirror at her long hair and her pretty dress. She stripped down and looked at herself again in a way she hadn't since she was six years old. Scrutinizing. Nitpicking. Judging. Scared of what was still there.

Years of hormone therapy had helped her stop developing as a boy, though the tell-tale sign between her legs was still there. She'd also started developing small breasts, though they were near invisible underneath even her tightest clothing. She wasn't a boy anymore... but she was going to need to pretend to be. So many years of being able to be herself and for the sake of her family she was going to have to be Kevin again. But Kevin still felt too strange on her tongue.

She felt like a hypocrite giving in to the notion that she had fought and fought to prove wrong for so many years. She'd tried so hard to bury that part of herself knowing that even with her family's support the world didn't accept her. The hardest pill to swallow was finally feeling wholly and fully herself and knowing she would have to give that up if she became Kevin again. It was like accepting that she wasn't a girl and the sick feeling in her stomach wouldn't go away. The proof stared her in the face even as her heart and mind screamed at her it was wrong.

Her chest tightened as she planned her infiltration of the school and thought about all she would have to do again.

She'd be in a boys dorm. She'd be showering and communing with other boys. She'd be treated like a boy and she needed to act like a boy.

The night she'd had to cut her hair had been the final stab in the chest. She'd spent so long growing it out that her hands shook as she held the scissors up in front of the mirror. She was giving up Katie. She had to. There couldn't be any trace of Katie left, but there wouldn't be a Kevin either. She'd decided that being Kevin was admitting defeat. Kevin was admitting she was something that she knew she wasn't.

Pidge was armor. Pidge was someone new. Pidge was purely facade until she could be Katie again. Pidge would keep her distance and focus on her...his...goal. Pidge would be what Katie and Kevin couldn't be.

Those first few months in the barracks had been hell. She'd never had to conform so strongly before and it felt like eyes were boring into her back wherever she walked. If she wasn't looking over her shoulder hoping to avoid someone who might recognize her she was paranoid someone would suspect she wasn't a boy. Was she walking like a boy? Was she talking like a boy? What did it even mean to be a boy?

She'd shied away from the locker rooms with an air of dread. A rock settled in the pit of her stomach as a voice in the back of her mind told her it was nothing to walk in. There was nothing she didn't have. Pidge was one of them, wasn't he? If he stripped down in front of the guys they'd believe he was a boy… but what would they think of the tiny breasts he had? What Katie had become so proud of had become an achilles heal for Pidge and suddenly she felt like she couldn't fit in on either side.

She avoided getting close with anyone and found herself putting up barriers she never had before. Katie had always been open and willing to speak her mind, but Pidge couldn't. Pidge had a mission that he couldn't let Katie screw up.

Pidge avoided showering at peak times. Pidge had made sure to hack the system to make sure he got his own room. Pidge focused on his studies and finding the truth. Pidge didn't have time for friends like Hunk and Lance because Pidge had a mission and a secret. Pidge knew that if he got too close that someone might find out what he really was. Or even worse, that no one would. What if they didn't believe her? What if it was her elementary school all over again and no one accepted that she was a girl? How much scarier would teenagers be than eight-year-olds? The thoughts had kept her up at night when she wasn't worrying over her father and brother. There were nights she'd stare at herself and not recognize the person looking back to her in the mirror.

It was judging her.

 _This is what you really are. Why do you fight it? You pass so well. No one suspects a thing._

The armor that was Pidge had started to crack and chip away from the inside out. No one suspected anything and that made the pain so much worse. Those were the times she threw herself into her studies the most. As long as she didn't think about Katie, Kevin and Pidge all waging war inside her mind she could get through it. She needed to. Her family needed her. She needed to be strong even if she felt like she was breaking more and more every day while getting no closer to finding her dad and brother.

Then she'd been thrown into the world of Voltron and the secrets had never pressed on her any harder.

Pidge was no longer an act but a person part of something so important, so life changing, that Katie couldn't find her way out. Pidge became more and more real and somewhere along the way Pidge had also grown stronger. The armor had stopped chipping. She felt more like herself than she had in months. It was like when Katie had been little and hadn't thought about gender or what other people saw. They just had to be who they were.

Pidge was smart, sassy, and snarky; so was Katie. Pidge was a brilliant computer engineer and robotics expert; so was Katie. Pidge could hold his own and fight with the best of them; so could Katie. The more time she spent with the rest of her team the more she grew into that feeling that Pidge and Katie weren't so different and the more she wanted to let her guard drop. At times she really felt close to the others and felt the guard she'd put up drop. Being Pidge was so tiring at times and she knew her teammates didn't deserve the cold shoulder she could give them.

Then Shiro had pieced the puzzle together.

Katie's heart and nearly stopped in terror when he'd said her name. It didn't matter how well she knew Shiro or how kind the man was, she was terrified. He knew. It was going to be like before!

It wasn't. She quickly realized she had nothing to fear as he pulled her closer and let her cry, both for herself and her family.

He respected her. He trusted her. He never once wavered or called her Katie. He never pressed her to confess or asked any more of her. Shiro would keep her secret until the day he died if she asked him to without batting an eye, but if she was going to be a real member of the team she needed to stop lying. She needed to be herself. As much as she was starting to like Pidge, Katie needed to come back. So, she told them.

It was all she could do to just stand up without trembling. How would they react? Would they deny her? No one knew to what depth she was or wasn't a boy. She was sure Shiro didn't know she was trans, just that he, (Pidge) was actually a her, (Katie). That was it. Not that Katie was... no. Katie wasn't a boy. She hadn't thought like that in so many years, she didn't need to start now! But the reactions she got...

They knew. They knew she was a _girl_. Despite her attempts at being a boy again and convincing everyone. They _knew_ she was a girl. They knew Katie was in there and they didn't question it. And even when they'd suspected that she wasn't a boy they never asked her about it. They never teased her. They never treated her any differently. She was Pidge. She was the Green Lion's Paladin and a member of the Voltron Force. She was a friend, no matter her name or gender. They saw her as a person and didn't care about anything else.

Even after she'd changed schools and made friends she never trusted them with the whole story. She'd hidden more behind her dresses and bows and embraced her feminine side as strongly as she could. But even without her dresses and bows her team knew. Her team knew who she was.

She knew then that if she wanted to, she could tell these guys everything. They wouldn't judge her. She was still her. Pidge suddenly wasn't an armor anymore but a part of Katie. It was like her double identity as the Green Paladin. The swell of relief that had come over her as the team welcomed her with open arms was like coming home to family. It wasn't something she'd felt with anyone else before.

She sighed and rolled over in bed before shuffling out of the sheets. The floor was ice against her bare feet that shocked her away from her thoughts. She shuffled over to her bathroom and let the light buzz to life. It cut through the darkness as she splashed her face with cold water and gripped the edges of the sink in an attempt to calm down.

She took a shaky breath. In. Out. In. Out...

She looked up at the mirror and for the first time since she'd started her infiltration at the school she finally felt like she could see herself. Her heart calmed and she smiled as that dizzying excitement rushed through her again. She'd shed that loose snake skin for good and could breath again. They saw Katie, so what was the harm in being Pidge?

She took another breath and flipped off the light switch.

"C'mon Pidge. You've got your first real mission tomorrow and you can't let the guys down," she hyped herself up and curled up in the rough military style sheets. "They're depending on you and you know they'd be lost without you," she chuckled to herself and finally drifted off to sleep.

Of course she knew she'd be just as lost without them as well.

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Hope you enjoyed this little drabble. :) No matter how head-cannon's or real cannon plays out I was very pleased that they didn't turn Pidge's "coming out" as a punchline like they could have. A+ in my book.

Comments and critiques are always welcome.


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